


Annoying

by Lordoflesamis



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2020-12-14 14:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21017624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordoflesamis/pseuds/Lordoflesamis
Summary: Everyone is born with a small wad of sticky notes (100) the colour of your soulmate’s eyes that you can write on and they’ll appear somewhere in your soul-mate’s path in the next 24 hours. Perry, after getting no replies at all for the first couple of decades of his life, gives up on the whole subject matter, until a Very Annoying stream of notes flood in when he’s in his early 40s, and just when he has a whole new lot of interns to babysit too, dammit.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Everyone! 
> 
> This is my first Scrubs fanfiction, I have read basically all of them on this site and it's not enough so I decided to write more! Please leave kudos/comment, they really do make me write faster, and i'd love to hear your thoughts!

Perry had used the first of his Soul-notes when he was eight years old. He still remembered how his hand had trembled and how blood from his split lip had ruined the ink in the top line, and how even though he’d tried really hard to write neat it somehow hadn’t mattered anymore.

~I don’t like living here. I wish I lived with you.~

The note had vanished, the blue paper fading from the top of its stack, and he had waited for a new note to arrive. A few moments passed, as he rubbed away liquid from his nose and tears from his eyes. As the minutes passed, he went to Paige’s crib and petted her hair as she slept, more to check she was okay than to express affection, though he felt it bubble in his chest all the same. As the hours passed he brushed his teeth and went to bed, half-expecting to see the new note appear in his bathroom or be waiting on his pillow, perhaps. 

When morning came, he pretended he hadn’t wanted an answer anyway. 

///

The next time he tried to contact his soul-mate was when he was twelve, and he had been sitting by himself watching the other boys play football, his black eye and malnourished frame keeping him out of the game. He took the slightly-crumpled Soul-note from his pocket, and wrote, rather unimaginatively:

~Do you like sports?~

As the note faded away he felt his face blush with embarrassment- this was his soul-mate for god’s sake! Couldn’t he be more interesting? As he waited, once again, with the sinking feeling that he would never get a reply, he kicked his feet in the dirt and tried to think about something interesting he could talk about. Could he tell his soul-mate about home? About how he would do anything to get away from that place? About how much he wished he had no Soul-mate and no sister, so that he could just run away and end this miserable existence?

“Perry!” Paige called, running over to him in the new skirt he’d bought her with money he’d slowly stolen from their father’s wallet, her face bright with excitement, “I got a Soul-Note!”

For a split second, Perry wondered if Paige was somehow his Soul-mate (he had heard at school that sometimes siblings could be platonic soul-mates, but usually that was when a person was born with two stacks). It would make sense, he thought as he lifted his little sister up in the air, that nobody else would love him as much as she did- he wasn’t exactly the best company. 

~Good Afternoon!~ her soul-note said, in child’s scrawl. Maybe he had asked his parents how to spell that word.

“Can you help me reply later?” she asked, grinning, and he nodded, shifting her into a piggy-back position,

“Yeah.”

As he carried her home, he pretended not to be casting his eyes around the path, the bushes and the bus-stops, looking for a brightly-coloured note.

///

The third, and last time Perry tried to contact his soul-mate was after he met Jordan. He wondered, after she got up out of his bed and dressed, if she would find his note later and smile, or hell, even laugh at him for being sappy.

~Is it you?~ 

When he asked her about it, a few months later, as they were having drinks, she laughed and poured him a shot of whisky.

“God no Per. But let’s have fun anyway.”

A few years down the line, when they were married, Perry thought about sending a Soul-Note to apologise. But they had never replied before, who the hell cared what they thought? They didn’t want him and he had found someone else. 

Who cared that it all felt wrong? At least it was entertaining.

///

John Dorian’s mum had told him, on no plain terms, to not send a single Soul-Note until he was an adult. Any more than that, she said, was a waste- children don’t need Soul-mates, they need friends and family. She was right, he supposed, but that didn’t stop him tracing the curve of the scrawled note he had kept since he was small, hidden under the pyjamas in his bedside drawer. He had been born with 98 notes, meaning, as his mother told him, that he had missed two chances to reply, and the third had disappeared once when he was little- He hoped that his soul-mate wasn’t too upset with him. He wondered if they were a lot older, or perhaps had just had access to their Soul-Notes as a toddler- maybe their parents weren’t as careful as his, and had let them send him chicken-scratch drawings. 

~Is it you?~ 

The note said, its light blue-grey colour standing out against the white of the pillow he kept it under. J.D had agonised for hours over what it could mean- had his soul-mate hoped that someone they knew was him? Did they know him, even, and as a small child he had managed to let them down? 

He was desperate to reply, just to apologise, but his mum was firm on this issue- both he and his brother’s soul-notes were kept in the locked kitchen cabinet, alongside her own unsent soul-notes. 

When Dad had left to become a travelling salesman and she hadn’t batted an eyelid, J.D understood why they were brown when his father’s eyes were grey. His parents weren’t soul-mates, and they had been married and had children together, though why was still an unknown to him. He couldn’t see the point in marrying anyone except for your soul-mate- surely you would always know that the perfect person was out there for you?

Maybe it was the old romantic in him, he thought one night as he wistfully attempted (again) to pick the lock of the cabinet. 

“John!” his mum called, and he grimaced.

Whoops.


	2. Chapter 2

There were rules, that came with these Soul-Notes. And they weren’t just cultural norms: there were some things you just absolutely could not do. Write your name, for example- or anybody else’s name for that matter. It made it a little more difficult to find your soul-mate, but it was the price that you had to pay for the clue in the first place. Besides, the other rules: you couldn’t destroy soul-notes, write in anything other than pen, and if you did not share a language with your Soul-Mate it arrived in their native tongue- helped the cause, so it kind of balanced out. 

////

J.D wondered if Elliot could be his soul-mate. She was beautiful, of course, but they had this odd connection he had only felt with one person (Turk) before. He had, as he always did meeting new people, briefly considered Carla, but on seeing her eye colour had dismissed it and readied himself for a lifelong friendship with her instead. But in the right light, Elliot’s eyes could certainly be the same colour his Soul-Notes were. He wondered if it was rude to ask her what colour hers were, but he knew the answer- that was a question saved for when you were sure, not for when you’d just met a person. You were supposed to wait, and ask them questions to verify if it was them via the Soul-Notes. This was not a physical rule, just a cultural one- and JD wanted to get it right. Just Asking wasn’t the way it was done, though he could imagine that now, standing on the set of a gameshow and holding up an excited, cardigan-clad lady’s Soul-Notes, “Do I have any brown eyed girls with blue eyed soul-notes who can send our guest a message?” As the camera panned around the neon sign behind them, which in red and yellow read JUST ASK, a dark skinned woman in the crowd stood up, furiously writing on her note. It appeared in front of the woman and confetti fell from the ceiling, the crowd going wild while JD yelled in his best gameshow voice, “We have a WINNER ladies and gentleman! That is why you should JUST ASK!” 

“Janice!” Dr Cox’s exasperated voice jumped him back into reality, “If you’re gonna stand around having wet dreams all day I’m afraid I’m gonna have to send ya home for misbehaviour.”

“I wasn’t-“

“Listen Sally I don’t care what you were ac-tually doing I need you to run down to your mummy at the nurses’ station and get Mr Truman’s test results, stat.”

JD didn’t bother to answer, huffing and spinning on his heel, running down the hall as Dr Cox whistled after him, willing himself not to get upset. 

///

“Do you think Dr Cox has a soulmate?” He asked later, leaning against the nurses’ station while Carla looked over the notes Dr Cox had written on JD’s patients’ charts.

“Of course Bambi. Everybody does.” 

“Really? I can’t imagine anyone would be able to deal with That for the rest of their lives.”

Carla chuckled, “He’s not so bad when you get to know him. He’s a good guy. And besides,” she continued, a little louder, “He’s not too scared to ask for what he wants.”

JD followed her sight over his shoulder, where he saw Turk disappear round the corner. Carla was smirking when he turned around, and she smiled at him, “He’s hard on you because you’re a good doctor. Trust me, don’t even worry about it.” 

“He wrote that I was incompetent on this one,” JD jabbed the paper furiously, making her chuckle. She swatted at him as he ran back towards the ICU. 

///

Perry got home eventually, after six hours overtime on a 9 hour shift. 3 am, he reasoned, was a perfect time for a scotch on the rocks and a pre-recorded football game. Just as he was sitting down to enjoy it, and hopefully drink himself to unconsciousness, something caught the corner of his eye. 

Turning slowly, he froze when he saw a small sticky note sitting innocently beside him on the sofa. Swallowing, then downing his scotch, he reached with an irritatingly shaking hand to take it.

“Just got off work. Have a good morning, Soul-Mate, hope to hear from you :D” 

They’d finished with a smiley face. For fuck’s sake.

Perry frowned, torn between rushing to grab his own stack of notes and throwing this one as far away as he could. He was too tired for this, dammit, how was he supposed to process this at 3 in the fucking morning? And who finished work at 3 in the morning anyway? Even the doctors at Sacred Heart finished shifts at Midnight, anyone finishing at 3 would be at least 3 hours overtime. He refilled his glass. So he probably didn’t know them, by that logic. So it wouldn’t hurt to reply…

He groaned. They hadn’t replied before, why the fuck should he reply now? What did he owe them? What did they want?

And, also, why did he want to burden someone with himself? They didn’t want this. They didn’t know him. They couldn’t, or they wouldn’t be trying to talk to him. 

He went to bed, instead, forgetting to turn off the TV and leaving the note on the sofa, wishing it would just disappear.

///

JD wasn’t sure what had made him send the first note to his Soul-mate. The first two they’d sent had been pre his birth, so they must have been older than him, and by quite a while, it seemed- Turk reckoned that the note he had drunkenly shown his chocolate bear once meant that his soul mate was seeing someone. (For a while, they’d thought they were each other’s soul-mates, despite the eye colour not matching, but it had been nothing but optimism.)

But for some reason, whatever it was, hoping maybe that it was Elliot (even if the dating thing didn’t quite work out), who he waved goodbye to as they left at the same time, he got one out from his backpack and wrote “Just got off work. Have a good morning, Soul-Mate, hope to hear from you :D”

Maybe, realising she’d just left work at the same time as him, she’d write “Me too!! How weird? You must be JD, then, and we must get married at once and have tons of sex and babies and-

Turk’s voice snapped him from his daydream,

“We’d have to get a padlock for our door.” JD muttered, and Turk rolled his eyes,

“Dude, I’ve been talking for the last like twenty minutes. You need to sleep before trying to contact your soul-mate for the first time! What did you say?”

“Nothing! Well, not nothing, I just said Hi basically.” JD smiled at his best friend, “Thanks for worrying, but I’ve got this. How old would you say Elliot is?”

“Our age? I don’t know, why?”

“Just a thought.” 

“I don’t think she’s your soul-mate if that’s what you’re thinking.” Turk said, shaking his head as he got into his car, “She’s crazy.”

“She’s sweet, underneath it all, I think there’s this real nice streak-“

“She’s nice, don’t get me wrong. But she’s unhinged. Carla does not like her At All.”

“Carla might not always be right.”

“When has she been wrong?”

JD considered, “Okay well maybe this could be the first time. I’ll just get Elliot to apologise, I’m sure Carla will forgive her for being so rude all the time.”

“Sure.” 

For the entire drive back to their apartment, JD waited for a response. 

“If they’re not Elliot, they’re probably asleep.” Turk said, drinking milk from the carton and handing it to JD, who did the same.

“True. Still, it’ll be a nice note for them to wake up to, and then I can read their reply and spend my day off figuring it out.”

“Good call, dude.”

///

JD, it turned out, did not get a day off. A terrible accident on the highway called him into a frantic, understaffed hospital reeking of death. Numb, tired, and stressed, JD was quickly taken to deal with the dozens of people being brought in on stretchers, bleeding out and panicking. Throughout the nine hours it took to treat them all- and after seeing six people lose their lives and numerous others suffer irreversible damage, JD made his way to the break room, where he collapsed onto the couch with a groan that turned into a sob.

“Oh Christ, Arabelle, not you too.” 

JD sat up with a jolt, turning to see Dr Cox lying, head in his hands. 

“Dr Cox? What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, Kelso wants to torture me with these twenty-one hour shifts.”

“Twenty-“

“Listen, Louise if I wanted sympathy I wouldn’t have been in here trying to have a quiet moment. Now stop crying so I can continue to sleep with my eyes open for the five hours until my next shift starts.”

“Sorry.”

“Shhh.”

JD sighed. His hand twitched, suddenly, with an odd desire to message his soul-mate. Maybe they were awake now, since it wasn’t stupid-o’clock-in-the-morning. But he wasn’t going to do that in full view of Dr Cox- imagine the taunting. 

He stood up and almost ran to the janitor’s closet, double and then triple checking that the man was nowhere in sight, then pulled out the three post-its he kept in his scrubs.

“Good afternoon, soul-mate. How are you?” He wrote, then smiled as it vanished. Without hesitating, he pulled out another.

“I don’t know if you’re not replying because you weren’t awake earlier but-“

“If I’ve done or said anything wrong or the situation is weird just let me know.”

He sighed, releasing some of the tension with the excitement of waiting for his soul-mate’s response, and the nerves of how they might reply.

///  
Perry didn’t feel them, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw them. Three pristine post-its, appearing on his chest. He groaned into his hands, muffling the yell he wanted to release, and quickly reached for them before anyone saw, screwing them up into a ball and tucking them into his trousers. The last thing he needed was anyone seeing them- thank god JD hadn’t been there or he would have had a constant annoying stream of questions about it. 

Who the hell sends three at once, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Please leave kudos and a comment! Love you!


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